Jesus performed exorcisms. I have a problem with this and if I remember correctly is nowhere in the Old Testament is said about demonic possession, that was very popular during the time Jesus lived on earth. And Jesus exorcised demons, namely that gave reason to the doctrine of the Jews of his time. This worries me because if Jesus believed in demon exorcisms there are chances that also have believed in Gehenna of the Pharisees?
When speaking of Gehenna fire that comes from the mouth of man and pollution is assuming that there is a place where there are demons and they take over the man to take them to the place where they are? I don´t think that the demon has so power, God will judge him.
Sobornost found a great paper concerning Gehenna and the places of punishment in the gospels, it is interesting as it addresses the place of the demons, the abyss, in great detail:
According to that thesis, the Jews had no concept of Gehenna prior or temporary with Christ.
Nowhere in the Bible are demons related to Gehenna, that the OT does not speak about demon possessed men does not mean that it did not exist earlier. Jesus hardly borrowed beliefs from the Pharisees or anyone else, He would hardly be the Messiah then.
I found a good link, but the forum had problems and my post was gone.
The demons are related to Gehenna indirectly: impenitent sinners go into the eonian fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25), and elsewhere impenitent sinners go into the unquenchable fire of Gehenna (Mark 9 & parallels). The punishment of rebel angels and rebel men is linked to the judgment of fire in RevJohn, too.
On the principle that there aren’t two eonian fires, and especially if that means there is no eonian fire other than the Holy Spirit Himself (our God the consuming fire), it doesn’t take a big leap to connect the two fires.
By the same token, Christ’s explanation of the purpose of the unquenchable fire at Mark 9:49-50 counts for both men and angels: everyone is salted with the fire of Gehenna, and salting is the best of things, and having salt in ourselves involves being at peace with one another. (But if the salt is rendered unsalty with what will it be seasoned?–it is only worth being thrown out and being trampled underfoot by men! The doctrine of an unsalty Gehenna in fact is routinely derided as a major stumbling block, especially troubling the hearts of little children. True, stumbling blocks must come, but woe unto those by whom they come! )
No problem, the doctrine of eternal damnation bothered me for a while also.
That link I found was pretty convincing, at least for me, but I can’t remember the key words, maybe you search google on your own, one of the arguments was, that the demons were thrown down from heaven according to Revelation short before Christ’s incarnation.
Luke 11:24-26 says:
*When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. *
While this implies that demons dwell in dry places, no reference to Gehenna is made.
@ Jason, I don’t think that Matthew 25:46 refers to Gehenna, but this is a different topic.
Good topic to discuss! We don’t have direct indications in the Gospels of where the demons go after they are exercised, but there are clues. In Mark 5:1-13 and Luke 8:26-33, we see that Jesus actually converses with the demon Legion. They do, of course, submit to Jesus and ask his permission to not send them “out of the country” (Mark 5:10 - NASB) or “to go away into the abyss” (Luke 8:31 - NASB). Which ever version of the story is most correct, we can understand that once a demon (or unclean spirit) comes out of a man (or woman), “it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’” (Luke 11:24 - NASB) Given this information, we can say that if demons (or unclean spirits) do not ask for mercy from an exorcist, they would be sent out into a waterless abyss, seeking dwellings of water. The reasons for why demons or unclean spirits seek watery places, I do not know. But the fact that they seek water was exactly the case when Christ allows them to possess a herd of pigs (Mark 5:13; Luke 8:33). They control the pigs to go into a lake.
Whether the demons/unclean spirits go into the gehenna of fire or somewhere else, it is not for us to know. If you want to know more about this stuff, you should take a course in demonology or a course in shamanism by an actual shaman. But to do that, you’ll need to go to your nearest university with an Anthropology department, find a professor knowledgeable in cultural Anthropology and indigenous studies, and take a plane to where ever he/she directs you. I wouldn’t suggest going through all the trouble.
I’m pretty sure the Jews of Christ’s time did not have a concept of a ‘spiritual gehenna’, but I’m sure they had one of a spirit world. Apparently they believed that spirits were everywhere, and even today many people believe and experience spirits, be them demonic/unclean or friendly. If you believe in them, and are curious, I wouldn’t suggest getting too much into this stuff… for obvious reasons ( ).
I have read, that the demons fear the water, the water to them basically is the abyss. According to that thesis, the word abyss is in most instances related to large bodies of water.
This was rather a kind of irony, the demons did not want to go to the abyss, but when they went into the pigs the pigs ran into the water (I do not think that the demons caused this) and the demons went to the abyss anyway.
^^^ True, the term means “swirling depths” and was connected in Jewish typology to any dangerously large body of water, whether the lake of Galilee or the Dead Sea or the ocean.
I gather that some kind of dramatic irony is intended with the pigs, too: they might be looking for water in dry places (whatever that actually means) but they don’t want to go back into the swirling depths, yet they end up there anyway when the pigs drown themselves in the natural swirling depths.
Hmmm, yes, that’s a more plausible explanation. Given the context, and what is said in Luke 11:24-26, the demons seem to need a physical body in order to get to “feel secure” and/or to escape the abyss. “Abyss” (Gk. ἄβυσσος) literally means “no bottom” or “bottomless”, and deep water certainly seems to convey this image.
The paper you linked in your previous post, the one by Kim Papaioannou, goes into some detail on explaining how the Abyss can be seen as a place of temporal judgement, Hades, the grave (Sheol), or even Gehenna (Papaioannu, 2004, pp. 164-172). It can simply mean a place of awaiting until judgement for spiritual creatures, or a metaphor for some body of water.
Well, as I said above, ἄβυσσος literally means “no bottom” or “bottomless”, but in the case of a lake or an ocean, I guess it can mean “swirling depths”, or more accurately, “swirling ‘depthless’.”
And it opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up smoke out of the pit as [the] smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke of the pit.
So maybe also here the abyss is related to water, I always was frightened by the deep water, there are also verses that might suggest that the deep sea is related to demonic forces.
)
But to do that, you’ll need to go to your nearest university with an Anthropology department, find a professor knowledgeable in cultural Anthropology and indigenous studies, and take a plane to where ever he/she directs you. 
I wouldn’t suggest going through all the trouble.
).